"Monterey, Plotting Her Route"
Sometimes she sees them taped to the back of a closet door, curling at the edges. Sometimes they're tucked into the back of a field guide at a used bookstore. She's found them in glove compartments or side pockets of older men's cars.
They're not a specific type. Road maps are the most common, but sometimes they're weather maps, with cloud cover and isobars and occluded fronts. She loves the topographic ones, with ridges and shaded elevation: the tighter the lines, the harder the climb. But it also works with hand-drawn sketches on scrap paper... how to get from home to the appliance store. Once, she found one that recorded both abandoned mines and abandoned churches, all in the same delicate handwriting. There's nothing about the type of map that matters to her in the least. She still finds herself.
Usually it's just a hint of her. An imprint. A shadow that fits her edges. There's her face hovering, translucent. Her body's there, folding into contour lines. Oh look, there's her soul... stretching out along a coastline. She doesn't collect them. She has no need to own them. All she wants is to find them, look them over, and recognize herself.
It doesn’t give her direction. That’s not the point. What it gives her is placement. Proof she exists, in the landscape, even hypothetically. A reminder that the world isn’t just something she passes through, but something that, on a quiet day, she might dissolve back into.